If the psychiatrist evaluating you believes that you have underlining issues( i.e. depression or an eating disorder) causing you to become obese, then they will suggest therapy before recommending surgery. In fact, all insurances required that you recieve a psychological evaluation before going under the knife in hopes that this will be the last attempt at weight loss. So, you wont neccessarily be denied but your surgery could just be postponed until you seek treatment.  

Some of the questions they will ask: years of obesity, family history, eating habits, tramatic experiences, etc. I remember specific questions about suicide, binge eating, smoking, stress, depression, expectations of weight loss surgery, etc. My psychiatric evalu was 45 minutes. The most important thing when doing this is to be transparent about any issues that you are facing in life. If you are not, it will directly affect your accountability after you have the surgery. For instances, I was diagnosed with depression and binge eating from my psych eval. Even though, they postponed me for 3 months until I sought treatment, it was the best day of my life. It gave me a reason to dig deeper to understand why I was obese and to address tramatic experiences from my childhood. I recently went back to get my psych clarence for the surgery and thanked the psychiatrist for noticing the depression and bing eating. Be TRANSPARENT & ACCOUNTABLE!

I am kind of nervous that insurance will look for ANY reason to not approve this expensive procedure, and am wondering if the psych eval is one of those ways.
Can y'all share what they asked (not specific), what types or whatever..
And anyone been denied BECAUSE of the psych eval?

You should call BC to verify that a pre-approval and reimbursement for a surgery is still covered even though you switched plans. Also, check with your employer to see if the termination date for Blue Cross is Dec. 31 or Jan 31. Some policies cancellation have a grace period which means you will be covered for an additional 30 days (Jan 31).

So, after a long hard battle with BCBSIL PPO (9 months to be exact) and two previous denials, I finally got approved after I took control over my process. They approved me in 1 day after recieving 260 pages worth of documentation and one long nasty 9 page letter telling them that they are violating their medical policy. For the longest, the medical staff at the University of Chicago has been telling me to read the medical policy and so I finally read the entire WLS medical policy and used the sources in their lit. review against them to prove my case. AHAHA! They didnt have a choice with all of the evidence that I met their requirements of a 3 month diet and that I didnt have to do Medifast, Optifast, Weigh****chers, Jenny Craig, etc. 

The most important things that I've learned from this appeal process
(1) DO NOT GIVE UP AND GO AWAY WITH DENIALS - denials means your missing information and you should harass as many people neccessary until questions are answered. (2)  USE THE INSURANCE MEDICAL POLICY TO PROVE YOUR CASE - read everything and research everthing.
(3) BE YOUR OWN ADOVCATE - stay on top of things, stay on top of people, make sure your information is correct, make sure it is recieved/sent and just triple check everything.

If anyone else has BCBS and need help with appeals, I can assist. In fact, I'll send you my 9 page letter if need be. Its way toooooo long to post on here. LOL.

This was the question I needed help with too!
My insurance requries 6 months, first app tomorrow..woohoo..
So do I do all the other stuff required before that and then wait for insurance or what?

Oh and I also wondered, if you don't have surgeyr approved did you have to pay for all the labs and dietician stuff since they can't attach it as part of a non approved surgery?